Breakfast at the Berkeley
The book tour begins!
Driving through London, we find ourselves suddenly in Paris. We've taken a lucky turn in traffic and are now driving slowly through a movie set for a Stanley Tucci film. There is Tucci, ducking traffic. He looks cold. Bicycles and pedestrians flash by from 1937. It's a vivid demonstration that fiction is the lie that tells the truth.
The first reading is at a bookshop on Notting Hill, Lutyens and Rubinstein. Among the books I sign is one for Sarah. She's the owner of the travel book store that is the star of the movie Notting Hill, with Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts.
I'm starstruck and London struck. When I wake the next morning, there's a review. http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-...
By the way, I'm inviting you to breakfast. Here's the invitation, sent by Barbican Press:
Channeling Amy Lowell: Invitation to "Breakfast at the Berkeley"
Breakfast at the Berkeley, Berkeley Hotel, Wilton Pl, London, SW1X 7RL, 9 a.m. to 10:30 a.m., March 20. Breakfast with author Colin W. Sargent, author of The Boston Castrato (Barbican Press, 2016). Free, but an advance reservation is required. Please send request to portlandmagazine@hotmail.com with the subject line “Breakfast at the Berkeley.”
Amy Lowell and her coterie are at the heart of Colin W. Sargent’s recreation of 1922 Boston, The Boston Castrato. In 1913 Amy Lowell and the actress Ada Russell booked an entire floor at the Berkeley Hotel, and the stage was set for her encounters with the Imagist poets.
After decades of neglect, a timely awakening of appreciation of Amy Lowell’s talent is afoot. Though she was granted a posthumous Pulitzer in 1926 for What’s O’clock, she was ignored for nearly a century and dismissed, even occasionally by her own biographer. An informal tally of 1975’s Amy: The World of Amy Lowell and the Imagist Movement reveals she’s referred to as “fat” dozens, if not hundreds, of times in the text. Universally, there’s been an unexplored sense of how dare this rich little rich girl ever try to understand and interpret the world, especially if she’s earned the Scarlet F?
It is impossible to study the Imagists in the U.S. without studying Amy Lowell. Her role as an opposition character to Ezra Pound injected incredible energy to the Imagists. Locked in a death struggle with him forever, she is Pound’s Other. Her poems to Ada, so violently maligned, are some of the most touching words ever written.
Colin reads his recreation of Amy’s world, and discusses her London visit, its repercussions, and her place in the transgendered and nonfconformist world of his novel. For more, see www.colinwsargent.com.
For those in the North, Colin is in conversation about his novel at its launch for the Philip Larkin Centre for Poetry & Creative Writing, University of Hull, March 10th, 6.30 – Exhibition Room, Brynmor Jones Library. Free. m.j.goodman@hull.ac.uk for more information.
Driving through London, we find ourselves suddenly in Paris. We've taken a lucky turn in traffic and are now driving slowly through a movie set for a Stanley Tucci film. There is Tucci, ducking traffic. He looks cold. Bicycles and pedestrians flash by from 1937. It's a vivid demonstration that fiction is the lie that tells the truth.
The first reading is at a bookshop on Notting Hill, Lutyens and Rubinstein. Among the books I sign is one for Sarah. She's the owner of the travel book store that is the star of the movie Notting Hill, with Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts.
I'm starstruck and London struck. When I wake the next morning, there's a review. http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-...
By the way, I'm inviting you to breakfast. Here's the invitation, sent by Barbican Press:
Channeling Amy Lowell: Invitation to "Breakfast at the Berkeley"
Breakfast at the Berkeley, Berkeley Hotel, Wilton Pl, London, SW1X 7RL, 9 a.m. to 10:30 a.m., March 20. Breakfast with author Colin W. Sargent, author of The Boston Castrato (Barbican Press, 2016). Free, but an advance reservation is required. Please send request to portlandmagazine@hotmail.com with the subject line “Breakfast at the Berkeley.”
Amy Lowell and her coterie are at the heart of Colin W. Sargent’s recreation of 1922 Boston, The Boston Castrato. In 1913 Amy Lowell and the actress Ada Russell booked an entire floor at the Berkeley Hotel, and the stage was set for her encounters with the Imagist poets.
After decades of neglect, a timely awakening of appreciation of Amy Lowell’s talent is afoot. Though she was granted a posthumous Pulitzer in 1926 for What’s O’clock, she was ignored for nearly a century and dismissed, even occasionally by her own biographer. An informal tally of 1975’s Amy: The World of Amy Lowell and the Imagist Movement reveals she’s referred to as “fat” dozens, if not hundreds, of times in the text. Universally, there’s been an unexplored sense of how dare this rich little rich girl ever try to understand and interpret the world, especially if she’s earned the Scarlet F?
It is impossible to study the Imagists in the U.S. without studying Amy Lowell. Her role as an opposition character to Ezra Pound injected incredible energy to the Imagists. Locked in a death struggle with him forever, she is Pound’s Other. Her poems to Ada, so violently maligned, are some of the most touching words ever written.
Colin reads his recreation of Amy’s world, and discusses her London visit, its repercussions, and her place in the transgendered and nonfconformist world of his novel. For more, see www.colinwsargent.com.
For those in the North, Colin is in conversation about his novel at its launch for the Philip Larkin Centre for Poetry & Creative Writing, University of Hull, March 10th, 6.30 – Exhibition Room, Brynmor Jones Library. Free. m.j.goodman@hull.ac.uk for more information.
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Divagations
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